


The Gamblers Anonymous Meeting is Next Door

by Stoic_Zee



Series: Amnesiacs Anonymous [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Losers - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cougar is Jensen's Mutual BFF, Crossover, Jake Jensen is Steve Rogers, Jake Jensen is not Captain America, M/M, Meet the Family, Memory Loss, Post-Avengers (2012), Pre-The Losers (Movie), Steve Rogers is Captain America, Timeline What Timeline, Wait-what?, even if those words are never uttered
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-01
Updated: 2016-06-01
Packaged: 2018-07-11 16:40:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7060711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stoic_Zee/pseuds/Stoic_Zee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carlos "Cougar" Alvarez was the first of the Losers to meet Jake Jensen. He was the first Loser to realize Jensen had secrets. He was the first Loser to realize Jensen was dating someone. He was the first Loser to realize Jensen's "girl" was an assassin.</p><p>Frankly, knowing Jensen so well has earned Cougar a lot of money over the course of their association. Roque and Pooch should know better than to bet against him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Gamblers Anonymous Meeting is Next Door

**Author's Note:**

> There are references to horrible things happening but no depictions of horrible things happening.  
> Also, since this fic is Time What Timeline?, Don't Ask, Don't Tell was repealed while the Losers were serving, but realistically speaking, no one goes around announcing their (non)heterosexuality, not even Jake Jensen.

The long-weekend had gotten off to an excellent start. Cougar had made plans with a lovely _señorita_ , who he knew well enough to invite to Pooch and Jolene’s barbeque. Jensen had disappeared on a date with his girl but promised to bring his sister and niece to lunch. Roque and Clay were barhopping together. Clay was keeping Roque from poisoning his liver. Roque was keeping Clay away from his crazy women.

Then far, far too early Sunday morning, Cougar received a mildly panicked, definitely drunken call from Roque that Clay had disappeared with, not some random crazy, but a definite, mad-as-hell ex-girlfriend. Cougar joined Roque and Pooch in the search for their wayward leader only because Jake didn’t answer his phone and Cougar was the only one who knew the password to the computer where Jake kept the mugshots and background searches of the Legion of Demons (a.k.a. Clay’s insane girlfriends). Likewise, Pooch was only there because Jolene promised to be mad if Clay was too dead to attend the barbeque.

Late Sunday evening, Cougar and Pooch were helping (well, Pooch was helping, Cougar was heckling) Roque as he guided a still-drugged Clay into the barracks. After the shoot-out and the car chase, all three of them had agreed that the base was safer than Clay’s apartment. The woman probably couldn’t get out on bail until the next day, but none of them wanted to risk her coming after one of them if they took Clay in for the night.

The sound of an unfamiliar voice brought Cougar to a halt. He signaled the others for silence and strained his ears to listen. The voice stopped and there was no reply, but the amount of noise indicated there were at least two men inside. Cougar drew his side-arm and saw Pooch and Roque do the same. Not that there was much either of them could do with Clay balancing like a particularly grumpy sack of potatoes between them.

Cougar pushed open the door and carefully peered into the room. He saw Jensen, who was industriously picking at the innards of some contraption, and immediately relaxed.

“Jensen,” said Cougar shaking his head.

He holstered his gun and strode into the room. Then he came to an abrupt stop when he got a good look at what exactly Jensen was working on—a metal arm—and who exactly it was attached to—the Winter Soldier.

Jake looked up at Cougar’s entrance and froze like a deer in the headlights. He rallied with a weak smile. “Hey Cougs, I didn’t expect to see you until tomorrow.” He caught sight of their other teammates hauling in Clay and nodded sagely. “Ah, a run-in with an ex-girlfriend. What did she want?”

“His balls,” said Pooch, all of his attention focused on keeping the colonel upright. “Found him strapped to an operating table at the vet where she worked.”

Jensen and his companion both winced. Pooch glanced up then and stumbled to halt, naturally so did Clay and therefore Roque. Clay grunted softly. Roque cursed loudly and looked to see the problem.

“Who the fuck is this?” demanded Roque voicing the question for all of them. (Clay definitely would have been interested if he hadn’t been strung-out on horse-tranquilizers.) “And what the hell happened to you?”

Jensen and the Winter Soldier definitely looked rough around the edges. Cougar, who was slowly overcoming his shock, could see blood on both of their clothes and guessed that Jensen was repairing battle-damage to the infamous silver arm.

“Guys, this is my boyfriend, James,” said Jensen pointing at the man with screwdriver. “James, these are the other Losers. As for the wear-and-tear, the first-aid kit at the apartment was low, so we came here instead.” It was not a useful answer, but it was very Jensen.

Cougar touched the edge of his hat. The Winter Soldier nodded slowly in acknowledgment. Cougar then turned to Pooch and Roque and held out his hand.

“Pay up,” he said.

Pooch blinked in surprise. “What?”

Roque scowled. “Why?”

“Jensen’s girl _is_ an assassin,” said Cougar. “I win the bet.”

“You haven’t even asked his what he does,” protested Pooch.

“He is the Winter Soldier,” said Cougar. “He is famous in certain circles.”

“What circles?” demanded Roque.

Cougar hesitated. There were many circles. But how to explain without panicking the Losers? Cougar imagined that Jensen would not be happy if his boyfriend was chased off the base. An unhappy Jake was a terrible thing to witness and worse thing to suffer—hackers always were.

“First rule of snipe club is don’t talk about snipe club,” said Jake into the silence.

“Wha?” mumbled Clay.

“Second rule of snipe club is don’t talk about snipe club,” added Jake. “C’mon, guys, _Fight Club_ , work with me here.”

“The Pooch understands the reference,” said Pooch unreasonably calmly. “The Pooch does not see how it applies right now.”

“Sniper club is more accurate but snipe club has the same number of syllables,” admitted Jake. “All of the world-class snipers keep track of each other. Hawkeye, also Hawkeye, Bullseye, the Winter Soldier, and Cougar, because he is an elite and already has a bitchin’ nickname.”

“Are you serious?” demanded Roque.

The Winter Soldier—Jensen’s _boyfriend_ —smirked. “The first rule of snip _er_ club: always hit your target.”

“And the second rule of sniper club?” drawled Roque.

Cougar cleared his throat. “There are no other rules.”

Roque scowled at him again, clearly not amused by the perceived attempt at humor. Pooch, on the other hand, boggled.

“Are you saying that sniper club is really thing?” he demanded.

Cougar shrugged and held out his hand again. “The bet, you lost. Pay up.”

Pooch grumbled and shifted Clay over to Roque to reach for his wallet. “Damn, how do you always know?”

Cougar smirked as he collected his winnings from his teammates. If they hadn’t learned to expect the unexpected from Jensen, then they never would. Of course, Cougar had an advantage.

-0-0-0-0-0-

Cougar was the first of the Losers to meet Jake Jensen. Of course, he wasn’t Cougar back then, just Carlos Alvarez, and neither of them were Losers, just two recruits trying to earn their Special Forces tabs and green berets. After graduation, they were assigned to different units and went their separate ways with nothing to connect them except their mutual desire to serve to their country and the fact that everyone in their class knew both of them by name and by sight.

Cougar, naturally, was known for his skill with a sniper rifle. Jensen, unfortunately, was known for his sheer inability to stop talking.

Everyone had Jensen pegged as the guy to give up, drop out, or lose it completely. Money had been wagered. Lots of money. Cougar had lost fifty bucks. At the end of course, there was more than fifteen hundred dollars in the pot and no one knew what to do with it. After all, some of the guys who had bet on Jensen had scrubbed out of training. Eventually, one of Jensen’s more vocal detractors had been elected to hand it over to Jensen.

(According to Hodge, Jensen's sister had been this close to punching him the nose. Meanwhile Jensen’s niece had proclaimed she always knew he could do it, so now their money was in the girl’s college fund since clearly she won the bet.)

Still, Cougar had kept a wary eye on Jensen. He saw the trembles of nervous energy that took over the other man when he was forced to be silent, saw the way his fingers went white with the pressure of his grip, and the way he physically bit his tongue, and the way he once dissembled a radio and a calculator and reassembled them into a machine that flashed “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” at the touch of a button. He saw enough to know Jensen wasn’t just a motor-mouth.

For all his excellent sight, Carlos wasn’t a visionary. Neither he nor anyone else undergoing training had yet seen the sort of darkness that settled in the corners of the brain and reached out in the quiet of the night to choke a man’s soul. Later, when he had come to know such things and had to bite his lips to keep from screaming, Cougar wondered what Jensen had gone through that meant he had to create his own life-line of constant chatter to keep him anchored in the here-and-now.

Somehow, Cougar never found the courage to ask.

When Jensen joined the Losers less than six months after Cougar—after failure, after failure of techs who couldn’t do in the field what they could behind a desk—Carlos kept his eyes and ears open. Part of him watched because he knew Jensen was full of surprises—he was fifty dollars poorer thanks to Jensen—but another part of him listened because it was… nice to listen to Jensen babble. The weird facts, convoluted analogies, rambling stories about his niece, and unintelligible commentary on computer systems were a pleasant reminder that life was not the horror of empty, accusing eyes or the silence of the grave.

Cougar was never sure if the others came to appreciate Jensen’s near constant generation of noise, even if he wasn’t talking, which was rare, the click-clack of keys was another sign of life from their resident tech, but Cougar definitely paid the most attention, which was why he was the first to notice Jensen was keeping a secret.

The first clue was Jensen’s bizarre behavior regarding leave. He almost always went to visit his sister and niece and always came back with new stories regarding the two. But sometimes he also came back with new injuries, bruises or knife wounds, which could not possibly have come from a child no matter how talented at soccer. When Carlos listened closely, and it was stunning to realize how hard it was to listen closely when he had been regulating Jensen’s monologues to background noise for so long, the stories could _not_ account for all of Jensen’s time on leave or could not have happened while Jensen was visiting.

The second clue was Jensen’s apartment. Most of the time, Jensen was ambivalent about sleeping on base, except when he really, really wasn’t and practically raced back to the apartment. (It was always “the apartment” and never “my apartment” or “home” when Jensen spoke.) Carlos had visited it once or twice, all of the Losers had at one point, and it was a tidy, modest one-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment in an affordable—bordering on bad—part of town. Jensen had upgraded the security to what even Cougar believed was a truly paranoid degree, but he did have a lot of expensive computer equipment. However, there was a lot of decoration that just wasn’t Jensen’s style including, among more innocuous things, concealed weapons storage.

Every soldier had a concealed weapon or two ready for easy access. There were even some discretely placed bludgeoning tools at Jensen’s sister’s house. But most of the weapons in Jensen’s house were guns, and Jensen had a worrying habit of “forgetting” his gun whenever they weren’t on a mission.

Carlos spent an embarrassingly long time trying reconcile the idea of Jensen as a spy or an assassin before he realized the truth. Jensen shared his apartment with someone, someone he had never mentioned.

Now, Jensen talked constantly, but he was very careful about what he said. He almost never referred to his sister or niece by name, and none of his stories contained any details that could reference a specific location. It was true even of Jensen’s stories about the Losers’ missions. It was a layer of protection that he applied unconsciously. Cougar could only conclude that the person sharing the apartment was very important to Jake.

Out of respect for Jensen’s privacy—which, honestly, Jensen could stand to be a little more private about some matters—Cougar decided not to mention his discovery to their teammates until there was an actual reason.

Fortunately, his teammates were not completely unobservant and after a few months of erratically fast exits, Pooch finally said something. It was Friday. They were not on a mission and so had the weekend free. While the others were still finishing up their busywork, Jensen had disappeared the second the clock hit five.

“Where do you think he goes when he hurries off like that?”

“ _Va a una amante_ ,” blurted Cougar in his understated way.

Clay dropped the paperwork he was holding and let loose a flurry of curses. Roque set down the guns’n’ammo catalogue he was flipping through. Pooch, readying himself to go to Jolene, dropped his keys and wallet back on the table.

“Jensen might move that fast for a lay,” said Roque. “But there is no way he has a…steady girl unless there’s a hooker that works real irregular hours.”

Pooch shook his head. “The only action Jensen is getting is virtual. Have you ever seen him successfully pull a woman?”

“Fifty,” said Carlos.

“Dollars?” said Roque. “Easy money. It’s a hooker.”

“It’s a video game,” said Pooch. “You want to bet, Colonel?”

Clay snorted. “I am not about to spend the money or the time thinking about what goes on in Jensen’s pants.”

Cougar and his teammates looked at each other and agreed not to think too much about the specifics.

“We’ll ask on Monday,” said Pooch. “Don’t waste my money.”

“You mean my money,” said Roque.

Cougar adjusted his hat to hide his satisfied expression. They would see, and he would earn back his money lost on that first, unfortunate bet.

Come Monday morning, all three of them, four if one included Clay, who was there primarily for the entertainment factor, were waiting for Jensen. The tech in question paused halfway inside the door.

“I’m not late,” he said carefully.

“We have a bet,” explained Pooch. “About where you rush off to on the weekends.”

Cougar raised an eyebrow as Jake visibly relaxed. The only time Jensen _looked_ relaxed was in combat. None of the others noticed. They had never been in a position to observe him for long periods of time during missions.

“Oh?” asked Jensen.

“See, I think you run off to your computer,” said Pooch. Ignoring the flash of indignation on Jensen’s face. “While Roque says, you’ve got a line on a hooker. And Cougar…”

“You have a lover,” said Cougar matter-of-factly.

For some reason, Jensen didn’t lose any of combat-ready poise. “Well, I guess you guys are buying Cougar dinner.”

Roque and Pooch immediately protested. Even Clay looked surprised.

“There is no way you have a steady girl,” said Roque. “We’d hear about it night and day.”

“Obviously not,” said Jensen lightly.

Pooch shook his head. “C’mon, Jensen. How long have you known this girl?”

Jensen hesitated briefly. “Four years.”

Cougar raised a brow. That was much longer than he had expected. Well before Jensen joined the Losers. His sister and niece had to know Jensen’s partner. Neither of them had said anything either. Cougar wondered why not.

“How come you’ve never introduced us to your girl?” asked Clay clearly wondering the same thing.

Jensen’s face whirled through a bevy of emotions so quickly that Cougar was unable to identify all of them. He settled on deliberately casual.

“Well, until recently, you really shouldn’t have asked, and I really shouldn’t have told, if you catch my meaning,” said Jake.

There was a long silence broken by the e-mail alert from Clay’s computer. Everyone else was too stunned to speak. As reality slowly realigned itself, Cougar realized this explained why there were no women’s clothes at the apartment. Pooch and Roque were having a different sort of revelation.

“You’re gay?” asked Roque.

“Bisexual,” said Jensen.

“But you’re dating a dude,” said Pooch.

“Yes,” said Jensen.

“But you never go out with girls,” said Pooch.

“You never go out with girls,” countered Jensen.

“Yeah, but I have Jolene,” said Pooch.

“And I have James,” said Jensen.

“So you’re gay,” repeated Roque.

“Bisexual,” corrected Jensen.

“And you never told us,” said Roque sounding unusually hurt.

Jensen groaned. “Look, I do not want my love life to be the reason I am killed on an U.S. Army base. There are plenty of other reasons people want to kill me. Some of them even involve my job and not my sparkling personality.”

There was an awkward silence as none of them could actually refute what Jensen had said. For such a friendly and cheerful guy, Jensen had managed to piss off most of the people he worked with, including the Spec Ops teams, the major brass, and the communications division, despite being one of their own. Clay was ignoring the discussion by pretending to work.

“And what exactly does James do for a living?” asked Pooch crossing his arms.

Jensen crossed his arms right back. “What, is it my job to spoon-feed you information?” He paused and added, “About my personal life?”

Cougar suddenly remembered all the guns stashed about Jensen’s apartment. Since Jensen wasn’t the owner of all those weapons, then it had to be the boyfriend. Would Jensen willingly date a spy or an assassin? Interesting personality issues aside, Jensen was something of a genius and not entirely unobservant. There would certainly be no hiding something like that from the hacker. Dating a spy and risking the country’s safety, and thereby Jensen’s niece and sister’s safety, was out of the question. Dating an assassin, a killer, was a different matter entirely. The Losers were killers, and Jensen allowed them near his family.

“Listen up, Losers,” called Clay. “Get your gear together and get ready to go. You can quiz Jensen about _his girl_ later.”

“Hey now, don’t give them blanket permission like that! Who knows how they’ll use it?” protested Jensen as he moved to assemble his computer equipment.

“Can you imagine what sort of person could date Jensen for years?” asked Pooch quietly.

“I still think he’s seeing a hooker,” said Roque. At Cougar and Pooch’s dubious looks, he added, “There are male hookers. Chippendale dancers. Escorts. Whatever. That’s why he doesn’t want us to meet him.”

Pooch scoffed. “No way. Not for Mr. Romantic over there. He’s probably dating another super-nerd. One of those hackers who can break into any government on Earth.”

“A killer for money,” said Carlos.

Roque laughed. “You’re joking.”

“Another wager,” said Carlos.

“Oh, you are on,” said Pooch.

“I am getting my money and taking yours too,” said Roque.

-0-0-0-0-0-

Carlos hadn’t expected to win the bet under these circumstances—with Jensen and his girl sitting at the table having obviously just survived a gunfight—but it was much easier to convince Roque and Pooch this way.

“Did you bet that I was assassin?” asked James incredulously.

“I told you Cougar noticed,” said Jensen his concentration back on the metal arm. “He copied some of your gun hidey-holes at his place.”

“When Jensen told us his girl knew how to handle a gun, I thought he was referring to something else,” said Roque grudgingly.

“I thought it was a very subtle use of double-entendre,” said Jensen innocently.

“Whuzzat?” slurred Clay. He tried to stare suspiciously in Jensen’s direction, clearly recognizing the tone even if he was too out of it to follow the conversation.

Roque rolled his eyes and shoved him toward Pooch. Pooch shoved him back at Roque, which led to a brief game of hot-potato—or tranquilized colonel—until Clay started to turn green around the edges. Cougar watched the Winter Soldier watch them with an increasingly baffled yet amused expression only interrupted by the occasional wince as Jensen worked on his arm.

Had any other spec ops team encountered the Winter Soldier while vulnerable, or had the Winter Soldier encountered any other team with their leader so obviously incapacitated, Cougar was certain that the meeting would end in bloodshed. The fact that they were all still alive and had not even considered reaching for their weapons was yet another example of how strangely the world twisted to Jensen’s benefit. Truly, God looked after fools and madmen, and Jensen was both.

“Okay, try it now.”

The Winter Soldier raised his arm and clenched his hand into a fist. There was a faint grinding sound that made Jensen frown but otherwise the motion was smooth.

“Good enough,” said James rising from the table. Jensen shook his head in mock despair but started putting away his tool kit.

“Hold up,” said Pooch. “Jensen, your sister knows about your girl, right?”

“Of course,” said Jensen. “It’s terrible. They e-mail each other and call me an idiot behind my back.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said James. “We know you monitor our e-mails. It’s basically like calling you an idiot to your face.”

“I don’t monitor _all_ of your e-mails,” protested Jensen.

“Yes, sometimes you’re in the hospital strung out on the good drugs,” agreed James.

Cougar raised a brow and exchanged a look with Roque. In everything from body language to tone of voice, this was past the flirting stage of the relationship and well into the old married couple domain. Not even Pooch and Jolene were so relaxed around each other, and they had been married before Pooch joined the Losers. In point of fact, Jensen usually wasn’t that relaxed at all.

Pooch took a deep breath and leveled a stare at the Winter Soldier. “You’re coming to the barbeque tomorrow.”

“I am?” said James doubtfully.

“Jolene has grilled me up, down, and sideways about Jensen’s girl for the last _year_. Now that we’ve met, _you_ can answer all of her questions,” said Pooch.

The Winter Soldier versus Mrs. Jolene Porteous. Cougar considered the idea for a moment and decided he needed to call his friend and cancel her invitation to lunch. She was a lovely woman and in no way deserved the horror the next day would bring.

“And I’m sure Clay will want to know why you got our tech shot at on his weekend off,” added Roque.

For a moment, James looked guilty. Jake flung the rest of his tools into his kit and rose to _stand by his man._ He scowled menacingly at Roque then turned to Pooch.

“Thanks for the invite,” he said. “We’ll see you guys tomorrow.”

Jensen put his hand on James’ back and practically shoved him out the door talking a mile a minute.

“It will be fine. The girls will be thrilled. Clay is terrified of my sister. Fortunately not in the way that means he wants sleep with her. She’ll keep him off your back. And hey, Sam will be there too. He can run interference with Jolene. You and Roque can talk about knives. And you and Cougar can talk about all of your long-distance shots—”

The door closed cutting off Jensen’s speech. The three fully conscious members of the team stared at it silently.

“How did they get on to base looking like that?” asked Roque. “Jensen had blood all over his shirt. His girl doesn’t even have clearance!”

Cougar shrugged. Jensen was familiar with the base, and he could act as a covert operative when necessary. Not to mention, there was likely nowhere on Earth that could keep out the Winter Soldier. It was really not surprising that the two of them had been able to get onto the base. He was more concerned about what they had been doing to be injured in the first place.

Pooch looked more concerned. “They were talking about Sam. Jolene’s cousin, _Sam Wilson_. I didn’t even know Jensen knew Sam. How the hell does his girl know Sam?”

Cougar had some ideas about that. He looked at his teammates. “Want to bet?”


End file.
